A Leftist Analysis of Antisemitism

Interview by
Danny Katch

The Republican Party is increasingly guided by white nationalist politics, which are in turn heavily influenced by long-standing conspiracy tropes involving hidden and powerful Jewish networks. Unfortunately, most of the public discourse about antisemitism has little to do with this disturbing trend. Instead, it’s almost entirely directed at criminalizing and suppressing protests against Israel’s genocide of Palestinians. While the Left is defending itself against false charges of antisemitism, we also need clarity and a strategic plan to combat the actual antisemitism, which is on the rise and threatens not only Jews but any progressive project.

This is the aim of the new book Safety Through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism. Authors Shane Burley and Ben Lorber have spent years both covering the far right and working as organizers in the labor and Palestine solidarity movements. At a time when many who accuse others of antisemitism are hard-pressed to define it beyond opposition to Israel, Burley and Lorber interview dozens of Jewish and non-Jewish scholars and organizers to lay out a clear history of the evolution of anti-Jewish oppression over two thousand years — along with strategies for how the Left can identify and combat antisemitism today.

Jacobin’s Danny Katch talked to Burley and Lorber about how the Left can lead the fight against antisemitism, even as we are faced with bad-faith accusations that opposing Israel’s massacre of Palestinians is anti-Jewish.